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Links 2/12/2024

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Zoozve — the strange ‘moon’ of Venus that earned its name by accident Space.com

America now has a high-pressure economy FT

Legal Theory Lexicon: Interpretation and Construction Legal Theory Blog

Climate

NOAA Coral Reef Watch extends alert scale following extreme coral heat stress in 2023 NOAA. We’re gonna need a bigger scale.

Climate change is making it more dangerous for kids to play outside, report finds The Hill

Generating Electricity…and Uncertainty JSTOR

#COVID19

Happy anniversary:

* * *

Vaccination, testing, clean air: COVID hasn’t gone away – here’s where Australia needs to do better The Conversation. The Australasian College for Infection Prevention and Control is doing way better than CDC’s HICPAC.

How to Stop Airborne Diseases Joey Fox, It’s Airborne. “If you know how it spreads, you know how to stop it.”

* * *

Altered mitochondrial respiration in peripheral blood mononuclear cells of post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection (preproof) Mitochrondion. From the Discussion: “Mitochondrial dysfunction has been extensively studied in acute SARS-CoV-2 infection…. This dysfunction is partly due to the extensive viral targeting of mitochondria and mitochondrial proteins…. Any persistent reservoir of the aforementioned SARS-CoV-2 antigenic agents could account for both the findings herein and the inflammatory state of PASC [Long Covid]…. In combination, these understandings lead to a probable second hypothesis from this work: that reservoirs of viral RNA and proteins in [the cells in the bone marrow known as human hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells (HSC)], upon HSC differentiation, remain in [peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC)] and lead to altered PBMC mitochondrial function through immune activation, sustained inflammation, and the symptoms seen in PASC. Thus, the longevity of PASC would be relative to the extent of HSC viral infiltration and related to the risk factor of viremia levels. As such, this study presents a novel cellular mechanism under the currently hypothesized mechanisms of long COVID pathogenesis.” SARS-CoV-2 reservoirs in bone marrow? That doesn’t sound good at all. Commentary:

The table is taken from an article produced under the NIH’s RECOVER initiative, which squandered a billion dollars laying the groundwork for survey instruments while not even looking for biological markers, let alone treatment.

China?

China will not fall into ‘trap’ of war in Taiwan Strait: former envoy Cui Tiankai South China Morning Post

India

How AI is used to resurrect dead Indian politicians as elections loom Al Jazeera.

Syraqistan

Israeli strikes hit Rafah after Biden warns Netanyahu to have ‘credible’ plan to protect civilians AP. Joe, good job:

The German Foreign Office gets queasy:

* * *

Why Israel Is Winning in Gaza Edward Luttwak, The Tablet

Egypt threatens to suspend key peace treaty if Israel pushes into Rafah on its border, officials say CNBC

Explained: Israel’s plans to invade Rafah, and why US, others have criticised it Indian Express. “[P]ermanent demographic changes” is a terrific euphemism for genocide.

* * *

What are the impacts of the Red Sea shipping crisis? Hellenic Shipping News. Tankers, apparently, remain unaffected.

How the Red Sea Became a Trap Foreign Policy

The Red Sea Crisis Proves China Was Ahead of the Curve Foreign Policy

Middle East–China Trade Prospects Remain Robust Despite Red Sea Crisis RAND

* * *

Israel need to sell record amount of bonds this year to fund war: Officials Business Standard

European Disunion

Germany’s Days as an Industrial Superpower Are Coming to an End Bloomberg

New Not-So-Cold War

Zelenskyy’s new top commander has a reputation as a ‘butcher’ Politico

Zelenskyy appoints 4 new military commanders Anadolu Agency

Former CIA Analyst Issues Warning to Zelensky Newsweek. George Beebe, director of grand strategy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

Outgunned and exhausted: what hope for Ukraine if US military aid dries up? Guardian

Maybe Russian intelligence isn’t so bad:

Syncretic Past New Left Review

Galician Nationalism: Ukraine’s Disaster: Part One Michael Basta, Understanding Russia. Part two.

Global Elections

Pakistan Plunges Into Political Chaos Madras Courier

* * *

Indonesia Elections 2024: Pollsters see Prabowo first-round knockout, but analysts say Anies, Ganjar still in the fight Channel News Asia

Practice of vote-buying looms large over Indonesian election Straits Times

Balancing Act Makes Indonesia an Emerging-Markets Darling John Authers, Bloomberg

Biden Administration

Massive Ukraine, Israel aid package overcomes key Senate hurdle as 18 Republicans vote with Democrats NY Post

2024

‘Just so despicable’: Senate Dems inflamed by Hur report Politico. Hur was appointed by [genuflects] Obama’s failed Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland. Hur is also Korean, so objectively a “Person of Color.”

Super Bowl

Patrick Mahomes rallies the Chiefs to second straight Super Bowl title, 25-22 over 49ers in overtime AP

Chiefs’ Travis Kelce gives cryptic explanation for tantrum, Andy Reid bump FOX

Shot:

Chaser:

Here are the top five commercials from the Super Bowl The Hill

The Bezzle

AWS and Blockchain Tim Bray. Amazing.

Anxiety, Mood Swings and Sleepless Nights: Life Near a Bitcoin Mine NYT

Amazon steers consumers to higher-priced items, lawsuit claims Reuters. The “Buy Box” a.k.a. “Mom’s Place.”

Inside the Underground Site Where ‘Neural Networks’ Churn Out Fake IDs 404 Media

Digital Watch

Google’s and Microsoft’s chatbots are making up Super Bowl stats TechCrunch

Sam Altman’s chip ambitions may be loonier than feared The Register

At least they didn’t throw the robot car up in a tree, like what happened to e-scooters:

Screening Room

Combustible Cinema? The Nitrate Film Issue JSTOR. I don’t know why they went to all the trouble of setting film on fire when they could have digitized everything onto obsolete storage media using unreadable proprietary data formats.

Groves of Academe

The Loss of Things I Took for Granted Slate. Yikes:

Defeating the open conspiracy to deprive students of physical access to books will do little to counteract the more diffuse confluence of forces that are depriving students of the skills needed to meaningfully engage with those books in the first place. As a college educator, I am confronted daily with the results of that conspiracy-without-conspirators. I have been teaching in small liberal arts colleges for over 15 years now, and in the past five years, it’s as though someone flipped a switch. For most of my career, I assigned around 30 pages of reading per class meeting as a baseline expectation—sometimes scaling up for purely expository readings or pulling back for more difficult texts. (No human being can read 30 pages of Hegel in one sitting, for example.) Now students are intimidated by anything over 10 pages and seem to walk away from readings of as little as 20 pages with no real understanding.

2024 – 5 = 2019. Just blueskying here, but smartphones started to became ubiquitous in 2007-2008.

Manufacturing

Bill Gates-backed solar upstart cancels US factory in reshoring gut check S&P Global

Boeing

The Hole In Boeing’s Inspection Program The Lever

Our Famously Free Press

Over Three Decades, Tech Obliterated Media Kara Swisher, New York Magazine

B-a-a-a-d Banks

UBS Loses to Whistleblower in Wide-Reaching Supreme Court Decision WSJ

Imperial Collapse Watch

“The Great Defiance: How the World Took on the British Empire” by David Veevers Asian Review of Books

Guillotine Watch

Private equity chiefs enjoy $40bn gain in share value as assets surge FT

Class Warfare

Demographic transition is just specialization and trade Interfluidity (SC), which seems to have a big project going on.

Antidote du jour (via):

Bonus antidote (via):

Double bonus antidote. You may be asking, “Why so many owls?” Note the hash tag:

The Super Bowl of Minerva flies only at dusk….

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here

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About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.

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170 comments

  1. Antifa

    SOMEONE MAY HAVE LIED
    (melody borrowed from My Grandfather’s Clock by Johnny Cash)

    Our President’s health is no match for his wealth
    Yet he’s running in Two-Oh-Two-Four
    Always way short of breath he’s the color of death
    And he routinely can’t find the door

    And the oath he has sworn he has treated that with scorn
    He is taking us all for a ride
    When they report no more bombs to send
    Someone may have lied . . .

    His speeches are stuttering
    He wanders off muttering
    When they report no more bombs to send
    Someone may have lied . . .

    He could sit by the fire in his Delaware Shire
    But the Ukraine is fast falling down
    Tel Aviv’s in the mire making Arabs expire
    While all shipping goes off to Cape Town

    He makes war every place with defiance on his face
    With his neocon crew by his side
    When they report no more bombs to send
    Someone may have lied . . .

    Time to ring the alarm all this killing’s not right
    And the Arabs will never succumb
    He may not want to hear it but this ain’t our fight
    And the whole world says our time has come

    The world thinks it’s time that somebody dropped a dime
    And tells Biden what he’s denied
    When they report no more bombs to send
    Someone may have lied . . .

    His people are hovering
    But he’s not recovering
    When they report no more bombs to send
    Someone may have lied . . .

    1. Tom Stone

      Will the Oligarchs get rid of Genocide Joe before he causes a Nuclear War ?.
      He’s in bad enough shape that Kamala has been doing her Happy Dance and Hillary is screaming NOOOOOOOO! while washing down the Xanax with Kentucky Bourbon.
      It’s a heck of a show, but I’d prefer it not to end with a bright flash and a mushroom cloud.

      1. ilsm

        Genocide Joe’s apologists are all over Trump not guaranteeing nuclear annihilation for EU countries not preparing to defend themselves.

        All for Genocide Joe.

        Shame!,

      2. Feral Finster

        “Will the Oligarchs get rid of Genocide Joe before he causes a Nuclear War ?”

        Ever seen “Don’t Look Up!”?

    2. griffen

      I like Cash and have a few of his American recordings. I had not heard of that tune, so thanks for pointing me in that direction today !

      “The Man Comes Around”…is high on my list by the way.

    2. griffen

      I picked Kansas City to cover and I would have been right…hard to figure anything different happening to the script for Reid / Mahomes / Kelce, and the Chiefs. To parrot a certain ad from a snack food company, all I do is win…

      Mahomes agent in the coming months, “about our contract, should Patrick really be paid less than a Dak Prescott? Come on man”. Order a Brinks truck to the Mahomes mansion post haste.

      1. NotTimothyGeithner

        Like Brady, getting paid less than Dak Prescott is key to success. The pension situation has altered the rosters. There aren’t that many six or seven year veterans around. They won’t get national ad campaigns, but they can get paid and win. As a result, Mahones gets his national ad campaigns.

    3. Idaho_Randy

      What seems to be somewhat overlooked is that for the 58th consecutive year the Super Bowl was won by a team based in the United States. There has not been a single non-American team in the playoffs in almost 6 — count them — SIX decades.

        1. Steven A

          About 400 Japanese colleges and universites have football programs. Unlike American college football, however, all of the players are real students.

    4. Wukchumni

      They panned in on many celebrities in frankly ordinary seats, and you almost felt sorry for them, in it wasn’t as if they got the Cecil B. DeMille treatment every time Travis did something of note.

    5. Wukchumni

      Why is it ok to keep the Native American names you like or seem to be inoffensive, and yes i’m looking at you Braves & Chiefs…

      49’ers versus Chiefs spurs me to highly recommend a book that largely contains the diary of a 49’er from upstate NY who goes west in the days of ’49. William Swain-the diarist, is a great observer of things, and joins with a group of mostly Michiganders, and due to poor hygiene and also the aspect of there being essentially one well used wagon trail where the animals shit right on it one after another, his group loses 6 men to Cholera which was running rampant, and to back up a bit, he relates that each 49’er is armed to the teeth against Indian attacks, but nothing happens until they get to Las Vegas* because the Indians are staying away from the mysterious disease that is killing whites.

      Swain was a good writer whose prose stands up well, seems fresh 175 years later.

      The World Rushed In: The California Gold Rush Experience, by J.S. Holliday

      Days of ’49, performed by Bob Dylan

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqGGQ6pUhDo

      * I could have written Nevada, but where’s the fun in that, especially with Chiefs prevailing over the 49’ers in the 2nd half in sin city

      1. Revenant

        The local rugby team in our sleepy West Country cathedral city is known as the Chiefs. This is an historical local term for the First XV team of a club side but when Premiership rugby came knocking, with its attendant media circus, they got themselves a brand, you see, and promptly adopted a logo of a feathered headdress from somewhere 6,000 miles away. The wokists have cancelled the headdress, to be replaced by an iron helm representing the chiefs of the local pre-Roman tribes. Soon they too will be cancelled (too white? Too… native?) and the wheel will either turn full circle back to the headdress or have to find a new meaning. Handkerchiefs? :-)

        I always thought the American Indian imagery was deeply tacky so I am not upset by the change.

      2. griffen

        Atlanta could one day make an update…The Atlanta Hammers has a nice ring to it and honors the all time sports goat that was Hank Aaron.

        In college sports, we still have a few lingering examples as well.

  3. digi_owl

    “Combustible Cinema? The Nitrate Film Issue JSTOR. I don’t know why they went to all the trouble of setting film on fire when they could have digitized everything onto obsolete storage media using unreadable proprietary data formats.”

    Where would the symbology and spectacle be in that? /s

    Also the antidote is a real hoot (and the nightmare of every vermin out there).

    1. The Rev Kev

      Those nitrate films are hard to deal with as they are such a fire hazard. But they have to be digitized before the film itself dissolves losing irreplaceable films from ages past. When they are gone, they are gone forever. About forty years ago the National Archives and Records Service experienced a massive fire which destroyed 12.6 million feet of historical newsreel footage and outtakes that had been donated by Universal Pictures-

      https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/forty-years-ago-126-million-feet-history-went-smoke-180970977/

      Then there was the 1937 Fox vault fire-

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1937_Fox_vault_fire

      And the 1965 MGM vault fire-

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1965_MGM_vault_fire

      2. vao

        In Germany, it is forbidden for private persons to own and keep nitrate films — the material is legally classified in the same category as explosives.

        There is a wonderful documentary (Dawson City frozen time) about how hundreds of film reels, often from completely lost and forgotten movies, were recovered from a dump in Dawson — the heart of the Klondike gold rush in the late 1890s early 1900s. Hundreds of original photographs and negatives from that era were also found in an old building, and recovered as well.

        The reels had been preserved more or less well deep frozen buried in the Canadian soil.

        When the time came to move them to a film conservatory for restoration and proper archival, no air transport firm would accept the job because of the risk. In the end, the Canadian military took over — after all, transporting explosive stuff by airplane is something it does all the time.

  4. griffen

    Scoring a win for the little guy that gets pushed around and pushed out of a job, the above article on the UBS whistleblower. There is likely much more to the background, and it involves a trading desk and the analyst’s submitted research reports getting a “rewrite suggestion”….Yeah that is not too unlikely I am supposing, and pretty simple to understand.

    UBS. Making banks such as Goldman Sachs (by example) look more ethical and upright, which is saying a lot.

  5. lyman alpha blob

    Dark Brandon has got to be teh stupidest meme ever. First it was intended as some ironic response to the rather hilarious “Let’s Go Brandon” situation but it was not funny at all as Democrats notably lost their sense of humor years ago.

    And now that Old Joe has taken to genocide, it does take on a sort of double irony – trying to joke that the feeble old man has some dark powers but it turns out he really is an evil genocidal maniac – that the Democrat party really shouldn’t much care for since it paints them all as complicit in war crimes.

    Let’s go Brandon.

      1. Screwball

        Maybe it’s just me, but that speech looked like it was out of a dystopian movie/novel like 1984 or V or Vendetta kind of thing. I thought it was creepy, and don’t creep easy. All I could think was “what are these people thinking?”

        But his base (that I know) love it. They think it makes him look like a super hero, which to them, he is. I give his handlers credit, I think they see this too and played into it last night after the game.

        Biden trolls MAGA Republicans with Super Bowl tweet – The Hill

        What do they think that accomplishes? Maybe their bored since everything in the world is so great, according to their gaslight factory anyway.

        What a world we are living in. I’m glad I’m old.

        1. griffen

          Quickly perused that article, and well if someone such as “Morning Joe” Scarborough, who once upon a time a Republican representative to Congress from the state of Florida, is for it then I’m gonna be against it. Yeah I also will suggest this conspiracy idea or suggestion sounds highly contrived from some of the more ridiculous buckets of Very Bad or Very Ludicrous ideas ( others mileage may indeed vary ).

          Conspiracies only work if say in a football game, the random penalty flag gets thrown out there for breathing too close on the quarterback. Speaking of that and this Super Bowl, the ESPN channel has an interesting review on the Ravens team of 2000 that featured an incredible defensive team. You know, they could hit guys back then.

      2. Feral Finster

        Yes, but when Team D as the political manifestation of the PMC does it, then that makes it okay!

        If Trump were to have done anything comparable, the MSM and chattering classes would have flipped their collective isht,

    2. griffen

      My instinctive guess is that it was sent out coincidentally following the pass completion in the OT from Mahomes to Hardman. Otherwise yeah no context there at all. I do concur on the stupidity of the Dark Brandon thematic imagery, but then I’m just a simple person and I need to adhere to what I’m told.

      Let’s Go.

    3. NotTimothyGeithner

      It has strong, “how do you do fellow kids?” vibes. Though it wouldn’t surprise me if every young person still working for the Democrats is just versions of those high school republicans the GOP would trot out at conventions to repeat talking points and whine about kids these days.

    4. bobert

      The truly stupid part is that the glowing eyes are almost certainly taken from the The Boys lead super villain Homelander, a psychopathic Superman type with laser eyes who slaughters people indiscriminately.

    5. Acacia

      Brandon looks at Gaza with his laser eyes and…

      …these people cannot lose the upcoming election soon enough.

      Not just lose, but get seriously and head-explodingly hammered.

    6. ilsm

      This morning, Swiftie NFL fading, team Dark Brandon minions are all over Trump’s latest treason, against the neocon’s rules based empire.

      Trump has the unpatriotic thought that if EU don’t spend to defend themselves US should not sign up to sacrifice US troops to excuse throwing nukes around Central Europe.

      Oh the inhumanity!

      Good thing I am too old to be dragged out of retirement to defend Dark Brandon’s war aims.

  6. Steve H.

    > The Super Bowl of Minerva flies only at dusk….

    > No human being can read 30 pages of Hegel in one sitting

    Unravelling that leads me to this:

    Come, seeling night,
    Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day,
    And with thy bloody and invisible hand
    Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond
    Which keeps me pale. Light thickens
    And the crow makes wing to the rooky wood;
    Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,
    While night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.
    Thou marvell’st at my words; but hold thee still.
    Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.
    So, prithee, go with me.

    1. communistmole

      > No human being can read 30 pages of Hegel in one sitting

      Interesting to learn that I’m not human, because thats what I did, and in german, btw (I’ve read the ‘Differenzschrift’, for example, in one afternoon).

  7. SeventyTwoTrillion

    One wonders what the Axis of Resistance has planned now that Israel is… perhaps “crossing the Rubicon” isn’t the right turn of phrase, but they’re certainly taking a big, daring step forward by going into Rafah. Rumors are that the Gazan Resistance will refuse to negotiate prisoner releases now that Israel is assaulting Rafah. This comes simultaneously as Israel has finally, after like 4 months, rescued their first two hostages.

    Hezbollah and friends haven’t previously displayed a willingness to get involved on account of mass civilian deaths. I remember numerous bouts of speculation about imminent Hezbollah involvement after particularly egregious mass killings of Palestinians, such as the Baptist hospital bombing, but they have remained committed to the attritional approach. I’m unsure whether the potential displacement of over a million Gazans into the Sinai will make them shift to a more active stance, or if the plan is to not let the civilian and military spheres overlap. Israel is winning in the former, and very badly losing in the latter, if Resistance numbers of Israeli casualties and destroyed vehicles are even within 25% of the true figure. Yemen has very recently shot at another ship and the background level of strikes on US bases is being roughly maintained – that is, no escalations yet. Personally, I don’t trust Egypt at all to grow a spine and fight Israel, but they are making louder noises lately.

    Regardless of what Israel does in Rafah, it’s not as if a great big video game “You Win!” sign pops up if Israel forces a million Gazans into the desert or even just kills them all. In fact, imagine every Gazan civilian drops dead tomorrow – what then? They still have to fight Hamas, which even the US says that Israel can’t really succeed at, and Hezbollah is still there. So it feels a lot like Israel is just sorta hoping that things will resolve itself. The same hope that Ukraine has – perhaps an asteroid will hit the Kremlin at some point…?

    I’m interested in any thoughts you all might have.

    1. Em

      This Caitlin Johnstone article sums up the Zionists – https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2024/02/12/israel-weaponizes-sympathy-and-victimhood/. I don’t expect anything positive from the liberal Zionists. Liberals are just Fascists who want to delude themselves about the ugliness of the regime that they fully support. If that regime is threatened they always fall on the side of more oppression and they can then shed crocodile tears at their leisure, after their victims are long dead statistics.

      I definitely don’t expect the Arab comprador regimes or Turkey to act, unless their civil society (the real one, not the one paid for by NED money) goes on general strike and threaten to topple the regimes. The Axis of Resistance still have to calculate the risk to their own people of Israeli rockets and American nukes.

    2. Albe Vado

      Minor correction: Israel has rescued other hostages before. These weren’t the first two.

      They’ve also most likely killed more than they’ve rescued.

    3. Feral Finster

      Stop kidding yourselves. The genocide will go as planned, Egypt and Saudi Arabia (and Hezbollah) will, unfortunately, be shown to be spouting so much hot air.

      Israel’s American bully will see to that.

  8. The Rev Kev

    ‘Maarten De Cock
    @mdc_martinus
    A tragic U-Turn for the history books!
    Watch closely what happened AFTER @drTedros said what he already knew: “Corona is airborne!” (Feb. 11, 2020) One quick intervention of @DrMikeRyan and @drTedros changed his statement: suddenly the virus spreads via droplets…’

    If you have an addled, old fool mix up Mexico with Egypt, then there may be jokes about Egyptian Mariachi bands but that is about it. Deliberately fudging an airborne virus into a droplet spread virus however has led to untold deaths and injuries which continue to this day and are unforgivable. That video was from way back in February of 2020 and the fix was already in.

    1. antidlc

      And it was in February, 2020 that Trump told Woodward:

      https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-told-bob-woodward-he-knew-february-covid-19-was-n1239658
      Trump told Bob Woodward he knew in February that COVID-19 was ‘deadly stuff’ but wanted to ‘play it down’

      “This is deadly stuff,” Trump told Woodward in a Feb. 7 phone call.

      “You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed,” Trump told Woodward, according to The Post. “And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flu.”

      He “played it down” because he didn’t want to cause a panic.

  9. timbers

    Screening Room

    Combustible Cinema? The Nitrate Film Issue JSTOR.

    Nitrate film does have it’s fans. Some claim nitrate film has a certain look to it that is different from other film, and they can see the difference btwn nitrate vs it’s replacement, the less flammable and more durable acetate. Supposedly silver was used with nitrate giving us the “silver screen” look.

    Others claim this is romanization, and the look is identical or too close to call.

    I can say on a good note, that when Criterion was about to release Mildred Pierce with 4k scan, it was expecting not the original film negative presumed lost, but it’s next best copy – a fine grain safety copy. While searching for the safety copy, Warner unexpectedly found the original nitrate negative for all but 10% of the film. The finale 10 minutes or so being the safety copy, so the story goes.

    So we now have Mildred Pierce in it’s best possible silver nitrate film 4k glory. I don’t know if there is any validity to silver nitrate being responsible for the “silver screen” look but I can say the scene when Joan Crawford contemplates jumping into the ocean but is interrupted by a policeman, the shimmer from the street lamps and light bouncing off Crawford’s face do seem to have a silver glow to them.

    1. Carolinian

      Sorry but that’s not right. Silver nitrate is the light sensitive coating that all photographic film has. The nitrate mentioned above refers to the film base itself which is a plasticized form of nitrocellulose aka “guncotton”–the smokeless powder used to propel shells off of battleships. The original nitrate prints of old movies are superior more because they are closest to the camera negative whereas every time a film is recopied onto another piece of film a quality loss occurs.

      Old time theater projectors had heavy steel covers over the reels as they were running in case they caught on fire and fire shutters over the projection ports in case such a fire occurred. Projectionists were often union professionals because they were dealing with hazardous materials.

      Honestly we are better off today when the ease of digital copying means preservation via ubiquity is taking place. True, if we should meet our Kubrick finale as a species visiting aliens may be scratching their heads, if they have them, over how to play our movies. But the same might be true of strips of celluloid. They’ll also be asking: who was this person, Taylor Swift?

      1. timbers

        OCN I think.refers to closest original and is best source to copy. Admit I’m not an expert on the silver part but that is explanation I’ve read. Do not agree with regarding video being better as most video use in filming is 2k which is far less detail resolution that 35ml film captures is at least 4k ot better. I do agree film should be scanned in 4k or better as it deteriorates over time.

        1. Carolinian

          Almost all movies now are shot using digital cameras of very high resolution and in theaters they are shown digitally in the vast majority of cases. And of course many of the visual elements in films these days are created inside computers and may never see the inside of a camera.

          But while a film is created using photography that’s not what it is, really, and speaking for myself the reason we love those old films is much more about what’s being depicted than how.

          Also if those silent films had all been shot on lowly VHS, even, we’d at least still have them. That’s what I mean by ubiquity.

    2. t

      I know a film historian who, early in her career, attended a few private screenings of silver nitrate films at a wealthy collector’s private screening room (enormous room, enormous screen). She said they were nothing like anything she’s seen before or since and that the idea of “flickers” which she had always thought was about the novelty of moving images must have been a way to describe the way the light in the room was like reflections flashing off of water.

      And when she told the story, someone would always say was it like…. and she would say, no. No, it was not like foam night at the disco or iMax, orlaser Floyd or the Lite Bright you had as a kid or the actual Cinerama you saw that time.

    3. Wukchumni

      Nitrate film does have it’s fans. Some claim nitrate film has a certain look to it that is different from other film, and they can see the difference btwn nitrate vs it’s replacement, the less flammable and more durable acetate. Supposedly silver was used with nitrate giving us the “silver screen” look.

      In the 1980’s I worked for a large coin & bullion firm in LA for awhile, and we used to buy silver bars from reclaimed nitrate film by a recycling outfit. I remember the owner fretting that his livelihood was in danger, little did he know what was coming down the pike, a teensy weensy little digital spider.

      I’d imagine that he was the end user for many a nitrate film, and keep in mind that we only celebrate the good movies, and tend to forget all the dogs-which would have gone straight back to silver after their brief glimpse on the silver screen.

      1. Carolinian

        I’ve heard that a large amount of Hollywood’s archive is buried under the Hollywood freeway–used as filler. It’s similar to NBC erasing those early Tonight Show episodes so they could make further use of the then expensive videotape. Ironically the crude kinescopes (a movie camera filming a tv tube) that preceded tape have proven more archival in some instances.

        And photo processing labs have always had silver recovery units since some of that silver nitrate winds up in the soup when you develop an image. When the medium is expensive the bias is against preservation. In the movie world nitrate base film continued to be used for distribution to theaters long after production had switched to safety film. This was because it was cheaper. And nitrate tends to turn to muck over long storage unless kept under the right temp and humidity.

          1. Carolinian

            My brother has rafted down the Chattooga (SC/GA river where Deliverance was filmed). By now it may all be condos. But north GA was kind of scary back when.

            Dickey himself was long a GA/SC guy and a professor at U of South Carolina for awhile.

            You and Tarentino are into the Cinerama Dome.

            1. Wukchumni

              Saw Pulp Fiction @ Hastings Ranch 3 in Pasadena, and this theater had the biggest screens in LA, amazing,

              See it closed down in 2002 and now there is a Trader Joe’s in its place, filmgrims progress.

              }rosebud}

              1. Carolinian

                There’s a Tarentino book where he talks about all the movies that influenced him growing up and the Los Angeles area theaters where he saw them.(sometime over and over). Now he has his own L.A. theater that shows classics on actual film.

                1. communistmole

                  Tarantino makes good use of the nitrate films in ‘Inglourious Basterds’, although I find the movie in general pretty silly (the scene with Michael Fassbender in the tavern alone).

  10. Colonel Smithers

    Thank you, Lambert.

    With regard to the new Russian-born Ukrainian commander, one thinks of what Scottish historian Norman Stone said about Douglas Haig, “He was the greatest of Scottish generals, since he killed the highest numbers of English soldiers at any front in history.” Lloyd George was equally scathing of Haig in his memoirs, especially ill thought out and ultimately fruitless counter-offensives.

    With regard to Germany, Lord Ismay must be saying “finally (they are down)”.

    1. danpaco

      The thesis being kill ratios, wonder weapons and superior tactics. Where have I heard these points before?

      We’ve reached the stage of the war where the hopium articles start to come out.

      1. Em

        So June 2023 stage of the SMO?

        No links about Hind Rajab? This 6 year old girl was found dead in a car with her 5 dead relatives, meters from the destroyed ambulance that was sent out to rescue her. She witnessed the murder of her family at the hands of the IDF, then the deaths of the two rescue workers who got clearance from the Israelis to rescue her.

        Just thinking about the final moments of her life. I can’t help but wish her fate on every hasbara artist on social media and MSM. If Hind’s fate is justified and merciful as they keep claiming, then may they get their justice and mercy. IDF did this. The US and the West sent 2,000 lb bombs and cover. What kind of justice and mercy do we, as a collective, deserve?

          1. Em

            Ah, I don’t see linked tweets normally. That tweet didn’t include detail about the ambulance being cleared for rescue, so it was a trap from the start and Hind was probably left alive initially as bait. The calculated intentional cruelty is something else.

        2. Phenix

          At times it is hard for me to rationalize Hamas’ behavior.

          I read the story about Hind Rajab. I have read/looked at a lot of terrible war stories especially Iraqi stories. I read about the ambulance drivers and just started to cry. These men went out searching for a child, knowing that the IDF is operating in a free fire zone. They died trying to save her.

          What does Hamas do?

          Gaza is destroyed. The Israelis’ are war criminals…many American officials are actively enabling a genocide and have called for this genocide. Hamas wanted? an over reaction…I hope they did not expect this reaction otherwise they risked killing their people. It’s a nightmare. You can charge out against tanks and bombers but damn does it make Hamas look worthless when ambulance drivers are the ones trying to free a trapped girl.

          1. converger

            BTW: for all of the spot-on criticism of Biden enabling ethnic cleansing and war crimes in Gaza, I’m not hearing a peep from Trump about Israeli behavior.

            Does that justify US complicity? Of course not. But does anyone seriously think that President Trump wouldn’t be actively cheering Netanyahu on?

          2. Em

            Did you miss the part where the ambulance dispatcher coordinated clearance for the rescue? Because it was in what I wrote. The IDF knowingly killed Hind’s family knowing they’re civilians trying to flee. They left this scared little girl alive for a little while as bait, then killed her rescuers after giving clearance for her rescue. This isn’t exceptional, there are many footage of Israeli snipers shooting unarmed people and then shooting anyone trying to rescue them. The IDF are killing police escorts for aid convoys after they cross into Gaza.

            Hamas didn’t do this. The IDF killed and maimed 100,000+ civilians in Gaza. The IDF fired on civilian homes and vehicles on October 7, knowing that there were many Israelis in them, and then lied about it to justify their killings. If you want to talk responsibility, why did the Zionists murder and terrorize the indigenous people in Palestine in 1947-1948 and drive them from their homes?

            You defending this and crying Hamas more than 4 months into this. I have no words. If your line is that war is hell and your side can do anything in war to achieve its objectives which is clearly stated as complete genocide, then you don’t get to cry victim for anything done to you and yours, now or ever. I will link to a talk by Aaron, Daniel, and Gabor Mate, that might get into this with more kindness and understanding than I can muster.

            https://youtu.be/azxtxKyHntA?si=xPLFCIUIRFwPIlQ7

            1. Arkady Bogdanov

              Well, this may provide you with some small amount of succor. I have read that Al Qassam brigade has, on multiple occasions, given the Israeli armed forces predilection to murder children, used recordings of children’s voices and cries to lure Israeli forces into traps and ambushes.
              My only hope is that the current violence is essentially a sacrifice that will allow Palestinians to live and prosper in the future.

      2. Carolinian

        Vietnam’s Westmoreland–a Carolinian btw–was into body count. His fakery of same eventually got him the boot.

        We also dropped more tonnage of bombs on Vietnam than all of WW2. Still lost, in the end.

        1. JohnnySacks

          Outcomes aren’t guaranteed. There was Vietnam as you quoted – epic failure, total loss.
          Before that, Korea – ended in a two state solution.
          Before that, Japan, victory, but only after the almost 300 bombers and 100,000 dead firebombing of Tokyo, and dropping atomic bombs on 2 cities.

          In between here and there, some schoolyard bully level theater.

          So using that comparison, Israel still has a long way to go before a victory.

      3. Feral Finster

        Stop kidding yourselves. Israel is content to keep banging away from afar, especially since their American benefactors and euopean buttbois will bankroll this genocide ad infinitum.

        1. Em

          I get it, you’re a “realist” laughing at all of us who still want to retain some hope for justice in the world. If everyone had your attitude, then we can all just cower behind keyboards that log out every keystroke and there will be peace for our masters.

          Yet strangely, the Palestinian resistance and Hezbollah and Ansarallah fights on. Just like every other resistance movement of the last hundred years. They fight because it is their home and their people, and they don’t have a second passport that will take them to Brooklyn or Berlin next week.

    2. ilsm

      Body count where was that a measure of success?

      Luttwak uses same measures of merit as US used in Vietnam…

      He also uses Israeli figures for casualties of both parties.

      He could have gone to Vietnam instead of the Seven Day War in 1967.

  12. The Rev Kev

    “How AI is resurrecting dead Indian politicians as election looms”

    Can’t wait for the Democrats to resurrect FDR to endorse Biden with while the Republican resurrect Ronald Reagan to endorse Trump.

    1. digi_owl

      And i thought things were already beyond the pale when they reanimated the corpse of the duke to produce beer commercials.

      What horrors of digital necromancy have we wrought…

    2. griffen

      If they aren’t careful, Democrats might be resurrecting a corpse to complete a second term if that is Joe Biden remains alive and (some magical thinking I admit) he wins the November election. Democracy is preserved and we are all somehow saved from hellfire raining down.

      Four More Months! Heh, okay it’s really 8 to 9 months…\ sarc

      1. Jeremy Grimm

        Biden in a head covering shiny black helmet and breathing machine in a full body black medical support system.

        1. griffen

          That just made me stop and I had a good chuckle. Some days, these threads and comments just put a smile on my face.

          Different film, but to quote from The Dark Knight…”Let’s put a smile on that face !”

    3. paul

      Maybe they could use AI to resurrect the young, idealistic delaware community activist biden and send him out on the campaign trail, leaving the mumbling, angry husk behind in a whitehouse broom closet.

        1. Pat

          Thank you. I was too gobsmacked that any body thought Biden had ever been anything but self serving slime. His laziness and tendency to cheat were evident early on. As was his contemptuous and unjustified entitlement.

  13. Alice X

    ~Why Israel Is Winning in Gaza Edward Luttwak, The Tablet

    Not one mention of the terms: genocide, slaughter, massacre or murder.

    2 mentions of civilians:

    In the special case of Gaza, moreover, the crowded urban battlefield offers endless opportunities for the easiest of tactics, because contrary to accusations that only expensively educated U.S. college students could possibly believe, Israeli soldiers do not deliberately kill innocent civilians going about their business. Therefore Hamas fighters can be perfect civilians walking alongside women and children right up until the moment they duck into the right doorway to take up prepared weapons and come out shooting

    Yessiree Bob, there you have it folks, I’m an expensively educated U.S. college student. But maybe I have it all wrong, since the only business those innocent civilians go about these days is hunting for non existent food and water and that makes them legitimate targets. Not to mention anything about there being legitimate resistance fighters, that certainly would be too far. Do I need some sort of tag there?

      1. nycTerrierist

        n.b. would have been gracious of Scahill to cite The Grayzone, Mondo Weiss, and Electronic Intifada –
        who reported on this from the jump —

        still, good to see more daylight here

      1. The Rev Kev

        If the Israelis sent a coupla brigades to fight in the Ukraine against the Russians or even the Ukrainians themselves, their survival time would be in hours at best. They would be annihilated. So maybe the Israelis need to do a bit more learning as attacking & bombing unarmed civilians is really not making them any better. They are probably the second best military in this part of the world and for Israel that can be fatal if they try to have a showdown.

        1. Em

          If going by measurable numbers of enemy combatants killed and not just counting every Gazan male (and occasional Israeli hostages) between 12 and 70 killed, I’m not even sure the IDF is the best military force in Gaza.

          1. The Rev Kev

            They certainly got their clocks cleaned by professional Hamas troops that first day. I think that they lost about 400 IDF troops in stand-up fights and lost a coupla bases to boot.

              1. The Rev Kev

                According to Scott Ritter, that was nearly all Hamas those kills. And he reckons that 80% of the other people that were killed that day were by their fellow Israelis. I wonder if the Israelis themselves will ever accept those facts and come to terms with them?

                1. Em

                  I respect Scott Ritter for what he is but the track record for his analysis on the SMO is pretty poor and I don’t think he has any particular insights into the Gaza conflict. He did work closely with the Israelis two decades ago, but those people have cycled out by now.

                  Sinwar planned 10/7 as a show of force and to capture POWs to trade for imprisoned Palestinians. The civilian hostages are a relatively small portion of the overall number of hostages taken on 10/7.

                  So considering that Israel free fired on cars heading towards Gaza and civilian buildings, I expect a high proportion of those who died under friendly fire to be captured Israeli POWs. If somebody did a proper analysis for where and how every Israeli death occurred on 10/7, we can probably get a somewhat better sense, but my guess is that number is higher than 20 percent.

        2. christofay

          Iran, Hezbollah, US (not including air force), IOF, is how this not fully educated observer would rank it.

          1. Em

            Not counting the air force, I would throw there Syrian Army, the Egyptian Army, Ansarallah, the Iraqi militias, and ISIS ahead of the IDF. A little further afield, the Turkish Army is probably the strongest military force until you hit Russia and Ukraine.

            The very idea that you can get a bunch of undisciplined weekend warriors who spent their conscription bullying civilians in the West Bank, to fight any of the professional forces hardened by the Syrian conflict is frankly nuts.

            The reason the Zionists win in 1948 was because the Brits spent the previous two decades repressing Arab resistance and the Zionists had harden ex- Soviet soldiers on side. Plus an extraordinarily high level of treachery and brutality that took the Arabs by surprise. 1967 was won due to anti-Nassar treachery within the Egyptian Army and 1973 was a draw only because the US weighed in. The myth of IDF invincibility was always just that.

              1. Alice X

                One must be very cautious with Wikipedia in such a volatile arena.

                Around 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes in the area that became Israel, and they became Palestinian refugees[26] in what they refer to as the Nakba (“the catastrophe”).

                Some cite the number as 750,000, but something between the two is generally recognized. One should note that the Zionists held legal title to only 7% of the land in historic Palestine in 1947, the rest they would steal.

                A similar number of Jews moved to Israel during the three years following the war, including 260,000 from the surrounding Arab states.[27][28]

                This is very misleading. The number of Jews removed from the land retained by the Arabs was quite small. This wiki piece has some information:


                United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine

                This site has historic demographic information:


                Jewish & Non-Jewish Population of Israel/Palestine

                1. gk

                  There is no doubt that there were many more Arabs than Jews in the country. But I was talking about the number who were armed and trained, which is what matters in a war. I was using Wikipedia only as an easy online reference; I’ve seen the same facts in reliable books, not available online.

    3. Jason Boxman

      That was most certainly the case with the exceedingly restrained, indeed inadequate use of Israel’s air power in Gaza. In the 1991 “Desert Storm” attack on Iraq, for which I received a letter of commendation from U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Merrill A. McPeak for target selection before and during the bombing, I never deliberately selected a civilian target.

      Seems like a blowhard. Is this to buttress any accusations of support for atrocity?

    4. deedee

      I don’t know about his book but the IDF are really good at killing people who can’t shoot back at them.
      Top-notch bravery when it comes to killing women, children, hospital patients, journalists by dropping bombs and lobbing missiles from far away.
      Not so good it turns out when it comes to fighting people that shoot back.

  14. zagonostra

    >Here are the top five commercials from the Super Bowl The Hill

    Didn’t Israel run a commercial during SB? I guess it didn’t make the Hill list. I don’t/didn’t watch the SB, only interested as a cultural artifact, one where U.S. Tax Payers pay foreign country to use propaganda (in Jacque Ellul sense) on its own people

    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-02-11/ty-article/.premium/israeli-govt-to-run-ads-calling-for-release-of-hostage-fathers-in-u-s-during-super-bowl/0000018d-984e-db74-a1ef-db4e865d0000

    2. Em

      The way 19 year old IDF soldiers are called “girls” by MSM but 5 year old Palestinian kids abducted from West Bank homes are “pre-adult detainees”? At this point I have to believe that every Western MSM story gets run through Israeli intelligence prior to publication.

    3. ChrisFromGA

      Did anyone catch the coin flip? They brought in the coach of the high school football team in Lahaina, HI.
      That wasn’t the notable part, though. I had the sound off and the opening video showed scenes of a city in ruins, burned out cars, a beach, palm trees, and houses destroyed. I instantly thought it was Gaza.

      I wonder if any other ‘merkans had the awareness to make that connection.

      1. lyman alpha blob

        I did. Can’t have the government help with the disaster, but they’ll give a couple jocks their 15 seconds of fame instead and call it good. Maybe they can bring out the coach of the JV girls BB team from East Palestine to do the NBA finals. Equity!

    4. Screwball

      @zagonostra – not your fault I’m sure, but I get a 403 forbidden when I hit that link. I’m using Firefox. Curious if anyone else gets the same.

      Stay well all.

  15. Jason Boxman

    If you expect chatbots/llms to understand and reply with facts, as alluded to here:

    If you needed more evidence that GenAI is prone to making stuff up, Google’s Gemini chatbot, formerly Bard, thinks that the 2024 Super Bowl already happened. It even has the (fictional) statistics to back it up.

    Then you must admit that these systems are: defective.

  16. NotTimothyGeithner

    Re: the liberal arts professor and the literacy crisis

    I would also add information overload. I’m not sure about undergrad kids. That just makes me worried about long cover, but younger students don’t have textbooks with assignments hidden behind slide shows and edpuzzles (if you haven’t seen these, be afraid for the future). Seemingly simple assignments meant to review vocabulary become projects and the kids revolt at the prospect of reasonable assignments. In effect, the kids are spending their work hours searching for answers that were usually just in glossary. Ex. John Locke…life, liberty, and property. The difference between a glossary answer and trying to figure a worksheet answer from Google is nuts.

    Then the kids have streaming options and a huge backlog. They can keep watching Spiderman media, not even reading, or listening to Taylor Swift instead of dealing with the potentially uncomfortable. It sounds dumb, but they aren’t going to be bored enough to be forced to read a book.

    Standardized testing is a disaster, or directly linking testing to funding.

    1. Mikel

      One day, the ability to read long texts and comprehend them, based on an internalized body of knowledge, may be considered a superpower.

      1. bobert

        A friend teaches middle school in Philly. He says he has students who are deficient in their phonics but who continue to move to the next grade for “cultural reasons”. The solution? Have the middle school teachers teach phonics while simultaneously attempting to teach them reading comprehension. This doesn’t even include the students who don’t speak English as a first language. One administrator warned the teachers that the “COVID excuse” for poor student performance will not be accepted come test time.

    2. earthling

      Just started a course where the text is an ancient one saved as a pdf (great), but the Lessons are stupid slide shows on google docs, which you can’t download, but ‘you can save if you have google’, in other words, yet another way to force us into google’s surveillance system.

    3. Deltron

      At the beginning of the article, the author seems to conflate the banning of certain books with the deprivation of access to physical books when the two are different. The banning of books (e.g., Maus) is a banning of certain thoughts and points-of-view regardless of the medium. The deprivation of access to physical books is more related to the Google-ification of the education system.

      Elementary school children now have Chromebooks for learning English and reading assignments, not physical books which are going by the wayside (in the education system). My 5-year old daughter was given a Chromebook in her pre-K class at the elementary school, who asked parents to pay an insurance policy in case the Chromebook is damaged. I wrote the school and asked that they not issue a Chromebook to my 5 year-old, and I would not be paying insurance. It’s absurd. I haven’t had time to investigate, but I wonder if it’s Google pushing the Chromebooks onto schools (or state education policymakers), or if it’s the school board seeking them as a panacea or status symbol or something else…perhaps both. I question whether they’ve put thought into the repercussions.

  17. The Rev Kev

    “The Loss of Things I Took for Granted”

    Ten pages? That is woeful that. I got an idea. Get a large grouping of those students in a lecture hall and inform them that they are about to watch a two hour video and that they will need to concentrate. Tell them that they want their analysis after the video is over. Close the doors, turn on the Carlson – Putin interview and then turn on the mobile phone jammer.

    1. cfraenkel

      More than that – it’s talking about events in 2016. That’s the point. Crypto was always a bezzle, and the smart people in the room always knew it was a bezzle.

    2. ArvidMartensen

      Origins of Bitcoin and resulting Blockchain hoo-haa have never been disclosed.
      As Putin said, look for motivation and capability. So, a central bank or a friend of a central bank. In the West. Perhaps one that controls the rest.

  19. lyman alpha blob

    RE: owls

    If you are on the Portland ME area, you can see Minerva flying at dusk daily right now. There is a little eastern screech owl living in a hole in a tree in a public park and it’s been drawing a small crowd at dusk every day for the past week or two. Definitely worth going to see! Details here: https://ebird.org/alert/summary?sid=SN36709

  20. t

    Not to worried about anything lurking in bone marrow. The blood-harvesting set can certainly afford clean marrow.

  21. Wukchumni

    HOUSTON (AP) — A woman in a trenchcoat opened fire with a long gun Sunday inside celebrity pastor Joel Osteen’s megachurch in Texas, sending worshippers rushing to find safety while two off-duty officers confronted and killed the shooter. Two other people were shot and injured, including a 5-year-old boy who was in critical condition.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    So far in our thoughts & prayers after yet another mass shooting spree, its almost always a male who done the deed, methinks we’ve turned a corner with this latest assailantrix~

    1. Mark Gisleson

      The resolution was interesting. So if you go to mega-church services it’s typical that some of your fellow congregants are packing heat? This was California not Texas! Coincidence or were these off-duty officers volunteer ushers with security responsibilities?

      1. Wukchumni

        We in Cali don’t do wet heat-we’d wilt in Houston, where the megachurch near massacre went down

        It’s kind of right in line with the 6,737 (Atl leads all comers with 488 confiscations) guns being confiscated at airports in 2023, you’d think you’d do a mental checklist of things not to bring (full disclosure: the bastards got my mini Leatherman when I foolishly attempted to bring it aloft 20 years ago) and guns are a pretty easy thing to remember not to bring you’d think. As an added bonus for Walter ‘Mitty’ Sobchaks going par avian, you lose your gat.

        I know a few 16/7 armed & dangerous types (must be hard to sleep those 8 hours knowing how vulnerable you are during REM) and there must be scads of them now.

      2. veritea

        I can’t speak for other’s experience, but having attended a dozen or so baptist churches over the past 25 years sometime around 15 years ago it became very common to have several concealed-carry congregants and deacons in every service at most of them.

      1. petal

        PICTURED: Trans Pro-Palestine gunwoman, Genesse Moreno, 36, shot dead in Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church in Texas had ‘Free Palestine’ scrawled on her AR-15

        Snip:”A trans female shooter who opened fire at Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church on Sunday and left two injured had a ‘Free Palestine’ message written on her AR-15 weapon, per officials.

        The shooter has been identified as Genesse Ivonne Moreno, 36, who previously used the name Jeffrey and has a lengthy criminal record going back to 2005, including assault, weapons, marijuana possession and forgery charges.

        Moreno entered the megachurch with a seven-year-old boy just before a Spanish-language service was set to begin. She was wearing a trench coat and backpack, and carrying a yellow rope that ‘appeared to be a detonation cord.'”

          1. petal

            Hmm not sure-here’s an update from the DM, Wuk: “A Texas woman who opened fire at Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church was accused of being a schizophrenic with Munchausen-by-proxy – but was still able to legally purchase the AR-15 she used to unleash horror on Sunday.

            Gunwoman Genesse Ivonne Moreno, 36, had a lengthy criminal record going back to 2005, including charges of assault, weapons, marijuana possession and forgery charges. She also had a history of mental illness and was held in an emergency detention order in 2016, police said Monday.

            Moreno used several identities under both genders and it’s unclear what gender she identified as. However, police said on Monday she is believed to be the biological mother of the seven-year-old she brought into the church with her.”

    3. Pat

      Shooting up the church was not the answer, but my first thought was how much had Osteen bilked from the woman and her family. My guess, and I hope I am wrong, is that even if there is some understandable trigger for her insanity we will probably never be told.

      It might not be fair, but he is another in a long line of conmen whose snake oil is religion.

  22. veritea

    Altered mitochondrial respiration… from COVID

    This should be terrifying to everyone who has had COVID. No mention of what part of the COVID virus damages the mitochondria however (hopefully it isn’t the spike protein as that would be bad news for those that received a large dose of that particular part of the virus).

    The Warburg theory of cancer posits that it is almost entirely a disease of mitochondrial malfunction. The theory is an incredible fit to the data of where cancer comes from and how it progresses (far better than the mainstream DNA-mutation theory). It also implies different areas one should look for treatment – cut off energy supplies to malformed mitochondria and reduce inflammatory processes that damage mitochondria.

    So per the Warburg theory, damage to mitochondria should be expected to increase cancer rates far more than damage to any other part of the cell.

    For those that are wondering about the treatments that are implied by the Warburg theory – they are:

    1 – Stop the glucose energy process (stop eating carbohydrates) and force cells to depend upon ketones instead (e.g. adopt a ketogenic diet or fast for an extended time). Since damaged mitochondria cannot successfully carry out the more complicated process of converting ketones to energy they selectively die off without damaging cells with healthy mitochondria. Result: less cancer, more health.

    2 – Take drugs that interfere with the glucose energy process. Metformin is a well known one that is already used to treat diabetes, as is Fenbendazole – a dewormer that works on worms by interfering with their ability to process glucose (which kills them). Since mammals can generate cellular energy through two separate pathways Fenbendazole encourages cells to process ketones to compensate, similar to being on a ketogenic diet.

    3 – Reduce inflammation in the body by using trial-and-error to figure out what parts of your environment create inflammation. Key places to look are foods that you are sensitive to, mold and household chemical exposure, and stress.

  23. Wukchumni

    Gooooooooood Moooooooorning Fiatnam!

    (whooP-Whoop-whooP-Whoop} as the slick approached armed only with bundles of brand new consecutively numbered FRN’s with a fire and forget paper band holding the charge together because they’d run out of ammo supplying those four war fronts, and the hope was that with a direct hit with a somehow intact bundle on the temple of one of the enemy on the ground, that’d do the trick, and with a certainty of many paper cuts leaving them bloodied on booty call.

  24. NoOneInParticular

    Re: “Here are the top five commercials from the Super Bowl”

    Interesting the RFK Jr. spot didn’t make The Hill’s list. Instead, nearby when I looked, a link to this story —

    “RFK Jr. apologizes after super PAC’s Super Bowl commercial”

    https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4462770-rfk-jr-apologizes-super-pacs-super-bowl-commercial/

    The story says the ad cost $7 million. I assume that’s for buying the time. I can’t imagine re-purposing a ’60 JFK commercial cost much.

  25. El Mariachi

    Musk will be in prison by the time this awful decade concludes. Biggest scammer ever and not even a particularly good or charismatic one
    Just cringe with a nerdy contrarian cult following

  27. Carolinian

    A just out Diana Johnstone explains it all about the close relationship between France and Israel.

    https://consortiumnews.com/2024/02/11/diana-johnstone-genocide-meets-french-devotion-to-israel/

    There’s even a movie angle.

    In response to these statements, prominent Jewish intellectuals and community leaders ceased to revere De Gaulle as the leader of the Resistance. Around this time, the Resistance itself as national patriotic myth was rapidly discredited as the public imagination of Nazi Occupation came to center on the Holocaust.

    Cinema played a role. In 1967, the documentary film by Marcel Ophuls, “The Sorrow and the Pity”, convinced audiences that collaboration rather than Resistance had overwhelmingly dominated occupied France. The film had a strong impact on public opinion, not least on young leftists who the following year carried out a libertarian revolt targeting the two political heirs to the Resistance: the French Communist Party and President Charles De Gaulle.

    In the revisionist mood of the time, national pride stemming from the Resistance gave way to national shame over the deportation of Jews. This guilt became a sort of public ritual for audiences who watched Claude Lanzmann’s nine-hour long documentary “Shoah,” released in 1985. In 1990, France adopted a measure called the Gayssot law which can lead to heavy fines and even imprisonment for any questioning of the official version of the Holocaust.

    As I wrote in my book Circle in the Darkness, heresy defines religion. A French citizen can deny the existence of Napoleon, or any other historic event, but any questioning of the official version of the Shoah is blasphemy. Thus by sacralizing a unique historic event, the Gayssot law in effect established the Shoah as a state religion.

    In Annie Hall Woody Allen says he spotted Annie and her new boyfriend at The Sorrow and the Pity and “took this as a personal triumph” (because he had taken her so often). At any rate the above is an interesting take on the contrary forces pulling at French society.

    1. communistmole

      >In a remarkable press conference on Nov. 27, 1967, De Gaulle expressed ongoing support for the existence of Israel as a fait accompli while expressing strong misgivings about the future of Jewish rule over Palestinian territories.
      In a remarkable press conference on Nov. 27, 1967, De Gaulle expressed ongoing support for the existence of Israel as a fait accompli while expressing strong misgivings about the future of Jewish rule over Palestinian territories.<

      Raymond Aron, one of the most influential French intellectuals of the last century, wrote a whole book about it:

      https://www.routledge.com/De-Gaulle-Israel-and-the-Jews/Aron/p/book/9780765809254

      p.s. another great movie by Marcel Ophüls, about Klaus Barbie and France during Nazi occupation, ‚Hotel Terminus':

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKsZvRPCZqk

    2. Late Introvert

      I can recommend The Sorrow and the Pity, it’s a great film. It’s long, but compelling. And chilling.

  28. Helen

    “…The Hole In Boeing’s Inspection Program”

    Quatar refused to buy Boeings built in the new South Caroline non-union sloppy standards plant. Had to be built in Seattle.

    “Workers at a 787 Dreamliner plant in South Carolina have complained of defective manufacturing, debris left on planes and pressure to not report violations.”
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/business/boeing-dreamliner-production-problems.html

    Quite a story how Nimarata Nikki Randhawa pulled special strings to get that plant built, then got a nice bribe by being paid to do nothing by being on the Boeing board. She supported a 2009 economic development package, valued at up to $900 million, to incentivize Boeing to relocate the 787 Dreamliner production facility to North Charleston, and, as governor, approved an additional $120 million to Boeing for its expansion.
    Boeing board members earn at least $315,000 a year as of 2017.

    1. Pat

      Holy moly, how friggin’ much does that work out an hour? I fully admit that I am assuming that the Board probably never works enough to be the equivalent of one forty hour week per year, maybe even less.
      I will say that as an ongoing pay off Boeing has not gotten their money’s worth. How many disasters have cost Boeing millions upon millions of dollar because accountants and rubber stamp tokens like Haley haven’t taken their responsibilities seriously.
      (Yet another reason why the second thing that should be killed about corporations is the idea that the first responsibility is to the stockholders. The first being that corporations are persons only without personal criminal responsibility.)

      1. Polar Socialist

        the idea that the first responsibility is to the stockholders

        That is one of the most successful mind tricks ever: I did read an article a while back that not a single state in US has it coded in law that companies or corporations have any obligation whatsoever to the stockholders. The legally binding contracts are with the employees, suppliers and clients – in this order.

        As in, in the case of bankruptcy, the employees have the highest priority to get paid for the work done, then the providers for goods/services provided and only then the clients for goods/services payed.

        Stockholders are taking a risk when purchasing stock, and while they do have channels to control what the company/corporation does, not a single law protects them and says they are guaranteed to get divident and retain/raise the value of the stock.

  29. Mikel

    “America now has a high-pressure economy” FT

    “…Another pressure point I think about is the difference between the data and the felt experience of the economy. Worries about the economy have eased as continued growth in employment and rising wages have offset a cost of living crisis that saw inflation outpace the incomes of ordinary Americans…”

    But wait…

    “…Meanwhile, although headline inflation seems to have stabilised, the price of all the accoutrements of middle-class life — such as education, housing and heath care — are still rising faster than the core inflation rate. Healthcare emergencies and debt are a major cause of poverty for people in the US, where more than half of working adults have trouble meeting their health costs….”

    I can’t. Housing and healthcare, especially, being framed as “accoutrements of middle-class life”??? Not basic necessities??

    And all the those things are part and parcel of THE COST OF LIVING.

    1. lyman alpha blob

      Haven’t you heard? Much like how they substitute “hamburger” for “steak” and tell you the price of beef hasn’t gone up, the CPI people have now substituted “large cardboard box” for “house”.

    2. Revenant

      America now has a high pressure economy… because the economic boundaries of the West are shrinking. We’re bringing it home, baby! Even in overall decline, the relative effect of withdrawal of capital and activity in Greater China and in Europe will lead to a final surge in America. Like the revival of a TB patient before they die.

      “My tiny hand is frozen….”

  31. Albe Vado

    I don’t know why they went to all the trouble of setting film on fire when they could have digitized everything onto obsolete storage media using unreadable proprietary data formats.

    There’s an anime (Japanese cartoon) from 1998 called Serial Expirements Lain. It was made during a transition period between physical animation cells and digital. The animation was mostly physically drawn and shot, but augmented by various CG effects and digitally composited together. It was made with no thought of future proofing, so it was all mastered at standard definition.

    Fast forward over a decade and time came for the HD Blu-ray rerelease. They think that since they have the original raw materials they could go back and just recompile everything at higher resolution. Then they discovered that all the project files were stored in a format modern Photoshop can’t read. What ensued was a search for a working computer with the exact legacy version of Photoshop that could both read the old format and expert to a newer format that modern Photoshop could read so they could work on the files on more modern machines.

    Eventually they managed to do it and salvage the old work, but what an absurd odyssey to have to engage in.

  32. Wukchumni

    Would you call what went down on with that Waymo in Chinatown on the Streets of San Francisco, an ‘Immolation Derby’?

  33. tegnost

    The seattle times has a krug oped headline that goes “can America survive a party of saboteurs”
    Somehow I doubt that the practice of packing up factories and the jobs that go with them to china is what he is talking about…so you have to wonder “what is america?” and what is the meant by “survive”. Can a deindustrialized nation survive a war with the industrialized world? Can a nation that produces nothing but patents and debt survive on high fructose corn syrup and gmo potatoes with low water content so they crisp up better in the fryer and tinos (tomatoes in name only)? Can an america that injects “brine” with patent protected business secret undoubtedly poisonous oil industry by product into the ground protected by a fig leaf of regulation (right after the boeing door thing maria cantwell pointed the finger at regulators, a sick joke if there ever was one) survive? Can a nation survive a major corporate person building a self crashing plane? Can a nation survive corporate persons?
    So many questions, so few answers…

      1. Late Introvert

        Ya, I was going on earlier and deleted it. Yours is better and not funny ’cause it’s true.

  34. Willow

    > Maybe Russian intelligence isn’t so bad

    US has 62 Economics Nobel Prizes while USSR/Russia has only 2. No way Russia could be better at understanding supply chains & industrial economies. /s

    1. CA

      “US has 62 Economics Nobel Prizes while USSR/Russia has only 2…”

      An important comment.

      Paul Krugnan among other celebrated Western economists repeatedly shows disdain for economic planners in China:

      https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1amk0

      August 4, 2014

      Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for China, United States and European Union, 1977-2022

      (Percent change)

      https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1amkd

      August 4, 2014

      Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for China, United States and European Union, 1977-2022

      (Indexed to 1977)

  35. Ranger Rick

    Hur is also Korean, so objectively a “Person of Color.”

    In the 2010s the initialism BIPOC was invented, or at least came into more frequent use, specifically to exclude Asians and Latinos. (This happened to coincide with Harvard getting sued for discriminating against Asian students, and the case ended up obliterating affirmative action.)
    The subsequent wave of violence against Asians suggests it was merely the latest front in the divide-and-conquer strategy. But the end result is that the catch-all Person of Color has started to go out of fashion as people previously covered by the definition get included in the majority group — by their peers, if not the majority group itself.

    1. Albe Vado

      I’m sorry, but so far as I can tell there was no ‘wave of violence’ against Asians in the US. What there was was a increase by literal dozens of specific incidents that was very cynically reported as a percentage increase. So something like ‘a 120% increase in violence against Asians’, but the actual numbers were something like 12 assaults the previous year had increased to 20, or whatever.

      The ‘stop Asian hate’ narrative seemed to be rather quickly dropped when a number of the incidents turned out to involve black men being the assailants. Since minority on minority violence didn’t fit the implicit narrative that was being pushed about ‘neo-nazi racist Trumpers’, the narrative was simply dropped.

      If I’m wrong, someone correct me. But as far as I can tell the numbers never supported the idea of a widespread anti-Asian pogrom. It’s something the media simply manufactured.

    2. VietnamVet

      The question raised by the Hur Special Prosecutor’s report is how in the world did it get through the Department of Justice vetting as written: “…a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” The Texas Republican Lt. Governor Dan Patrick is likely right. With Donald Trump leading in the polls, panic has hit the Deep State. Trump’s transactional deal is, if elected, he will fire them all. The revolving door will slam shut. A viable Democratic candidate is needed but there are only Hillary and Michelle. A Canadian educated East Indian/Jamaican Vice President is by definition a globalist not a MAGA American.

      Kamala Harris is not the last Empress of the Western Empire quite yet. The US/UK oceanic regime has lost control of two choke points already (Red Sea and Suez Canal) and the third, the Panama Canal, is in decline due to the climate change drought. With the endless Russian-NATO Balkan WW3, the Israel Arabian Peninsula War, and both escalating, the Fall will occur shortly unless UN Armistices are signed and secure DMZs built to separate the combatants.

      1. Yves Smith

        You assume with no evidence that this language was not negotiated down from what Hur originally wrote and/or is not already unduly kind to Biden. I welcome lawyers to opine, but I believe the standard is whether someone is competent to stand trial. Hur is effectively saying that Biden isn’t. So I assume everyone in the DoJ would understand if pushed Hur would be on solid ground in refusing to back down because his dodge was extremely kind. He could/would resign or force Garland to fire him rather than weaken it further.

  36. Feral Finster

    Regarding the appoint of Syrskii – note that Zaluzhnyii has gone out quietly.

    Stop kidding yourselves, stop pretending that elements in the Kiev regime will do Russia’s work for it. If Russia wants to win this war, they will have to go out and do so. Victory will not fall into Russia’s lap. Russia will haver to take it.

    1. .Tom

      “Stop kidding yourselves” is you’re standard comment intro. Like Colonel Smithers always addresses comments to someone with “Thank you, ____.“

    2. Darthbobber

      Looks to me as if that’s what they’ve been doing. Though they do have it tough, lacking the benefit of your presumably infallible advice.

      1. Feral Finster

        Last I checked, the regime in Kiev still sleeps soundly in their beds, the electrical system still works, the trains still run, etc..

    3. Polar Socialist

      For those who are interested, it was just not Zaluzhnyii who was replaced by Zelenskyi, the list of new appointments is much longer:

      Commander of Ground Forces Lt. Gen Oleksandr Pavliuk

      Commander of the United Forces of Ukraine Lt. Gen. Yurii Sodol

      Commander of Air Assault Forces Brig. Gen. Ihor Skibyuk

      Commander of Territorial Defense Forces Maj. Gen Ihor Plahuta

      Deputies of Commander-in-Chief Col. Vadym Sukharevsky and Col. Andrii Lebedenko

      Chief of General Staff Maj. Gen. Anatoliy Barhylevych

      Deputies of Chief of General Staff Brig. Gens. Volodymyr Horbatiuk, Oleksii Shevchenko and Mykhailo Drapatyi

      Minister of Veteran Affairs was removed, no replacement as of now.

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